Many different fields require the management of resources in order to carry out programs and schedule activities effectively and efficiently. For example, the construction of a building requires scheduling the use of general and specialized personnel, of particular pieces of equipment and of delivery vehicles. In addition, a number of these resources may have to be shared with other construction projects at other sites. It also involves managing the rescheduling of the use of those resources as time passes and events unfold, often not in accordance with the original schedule.
Similarly, the efficient and effective use of surgical operating rooms in a hospital requires coordinating the use of numerous different resources, usually requiring collecting and gaining access to and then making use of information derived from many different sources. Some of the resources which must be managed and coordinated in a surgical suite or wing include the operating rooms, the surgeons, the anaesthesiologists, the residents, the nurses, the technicians, specialized pieces of equipment and the like.
In the last decade, there has been a significant increase in the use of computers and computer display systems for accessing and displaying data. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,725,650 discloses a method and arrangement for visually representing industrial management data. This patent teaches the use of a computer display for representing data in the form of bar-graphs or pie-graphs. The displays are for past and real time data and do not include projections into the future. In addition, each graph is independent of each other graph so that the impact of a change in one will not affect another. There is no suggestion in this patent that the method therein disclosed could be used for prospective or dynamic management of the utilization of resources.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,646,238 relates to a computerized system for planning the testing and grading of products as part of a manufacturing process. This patent does not disclose any system for prospectively scheduling the utilization of resources, nor does it disclose any method for monitoring actual utilization of resources, nor does it disclose a system where scheduling conflicts are noted.
U.S Pat. No. 4,547,851 relates to interactive communications systems used in restaurants for processing food orders by patrons and for making entertainment, like video games available to patrons. It does not relate to resource scheduling, either prospectively or dynamically.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,591,983 discloses a hierarchical knowledge system and does not appear to pertain at all to scheduling of interrelated and interdependent resources.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,336,589 discloses a method and system for monitoring and controlling the flow of articles in a warehouse. It is designed primarily to keep track of orders and of the articles ordered as they are taken from stock and prepared for shipment. There is no suggestion that such a system could be used for resource scheduling, management or monitoring.
Project planners which employ computers are also well known. Such project planners most commonly are task or activity focused. They are designed primarily for sequential scheduling of related tasks. For example, if a construction project must proceed through six phases, and phase 2 cannot begin until phase 1 is 2/3 complete, and phases 3, 4 and 6 each must await completion of the preceding phase, but phase 5 can begin simultaneously with phase 4, a project planner could be used to set up the schedule at the outset and to adjust that schedule to reflect slippages as they occur. Project planners, however, are not well equipped to manage the resources employed in the various activities or to alert the operators to the need to adjust the scheduled activities in response to other demands upon those resources.
The management of resources, utilization of which can change in time and can have complex interrelationships, can present serious problems to effective scheduling of the use of those resources and the tasks or activities in which they are employed. Inefficient and particularly incompatible solutions to these problems can be very costly in a manufacturing setting, in the construction of a building and elsewhere. Inappropriate solutions to such. problems become far more serious when they involve medical facilities and the performance of surgery because they can then present life and death issues.
What is needed is an effective display of at least some of the available resources as a function of time associated with a data base of information relating to displayed resources and perhaps to others as well. In addition, such a system should, most advantageously, be capable of being accessed in order to produce additional displays relating to additional resources. In one of its more general forms, such a system should permit changing the time scale to accommodate widely diverse applications. Most desirably, it should also be able to display short range as well as long range projected (and/or historical) utilization without distorting relationships between displayed data when going from short to long range or vice versa.
Additionally, and, in some settings, most importantly, the system should be capable of showing interrelationships between resources so that changes in utilization of one or more resources, reveal the impact of those changes upon the availability and utilization of other resources as well as upon anticipated future utilization of the same resource and upon the activities in which they are employed.